Agency
by Staxia
Summary: Sharon is clearly on Team Cap. Why? How did she provide so much behind-the-scenes help? A retelling of Civil War from Sharon's POV. Spoilers.
1. WWPD?

_Langley, Virginia, U.S.A._

"I don't like it."

"I don't think you have a choice."

Her boss looked over his glasses at Sharon. "When's the funeral?"

"Tomorrow," she answered, slowly. She'd worked with him for two years, long enough to be wary of his non sequiturs. "I fly to London this afternoon."

" _He'll_ be there, won't he?" The emphasis was subtle, but Sharon imagined she could hear italics when Bob said 'he'. Or maybe a capitalized letter, the way that devout people spoke about their gods.

"Of course he will. He's going to be a pall bearer."

"Scuttlebutt is that he's balking at signing."

"Of course he is," she snorted.

"Why 'of course'?" Bob asked, tenting his fingers and leaning back in his creaky chair. "He's a good soldier. He should appreciate a clear chain of command." Not challenging. Expectant. Like a professor waiting for a clever answer from a prize pupil.

"He's not a good soldier," Sharon shook her head. "Everyone gets that wrong."

Bob didn't answer, just twirled a finger, indicating she should go on.

"' _Not a perfect soldier, but a good man.'_ That's what Erskine told Aunt Peggy back then. That's why he chose Steve and why Peg chose Steve. Back when the Nazis were taking over Europe, being a good soldier was what a good man did. Especially if you were a naïve kid who had never been further from home than Coney Island."

"But…" he prompted her.

"But nothing. Remember the rescue mission that made him a hero? He went AWOL to stage that. He disregarded orders to do the right thing. Even back then, he did what was right, not what the rules said."

"And now?"

"Now, he's not a wet-behind-the-ears kid anymore. He got a master class in hidden agendas from Fury and then a post-doc in ulterior motives from Pierce. Not to mention personal tutoring from Romanov. Back then, he signed up to be a soldier because a good man would fight Hitler. But it's not back then anymore and he knows it. He's learned a lot about how the world works since he came out of the ice. He's not going to let himself be manipulated again."

"He's tight with Romanov?"

"That's what the reports say."

"Sleeping with her?"

"Not that anyone can tell, no."

"You've been reading the reports?"

"Of course."

"Why?"

"He _is_ a friend of the family, sir."

Bob let his lips twitch, a spy's smile.

"Romanov is going to sign."

"She's practical, sir."

"Could she convince him to sign?" Again, the subtle weight of the pronoun.

Sharon thought a long time before answering.

"I don't know. Maybe," she weighed factors in her head. "He's pretty straightforward guy and he's been willing to let Romanov do the tricky thinking for him in the past. She might sway him."

"He let your Aunt Peggy do the thinking for him, back in the bad old days."

Sharon let her own lips twitch. "He likes clever women, I guess."

"Could Peggy convince him that signing was the right thing to do?"

"Probably. He'd listen to her because he knew she was smarter than he was. But she wouldn't."

"Why not?"

"Because the Accords are stupid. Impractical. Dangerous. She would have been in favor of oversight, sure. But the Accords aren't oversight. They are control. Worse, they are control by _committee_. She would have killed this idea before Stark could finish saying it out loud."

"Her Stark was smarter than our Stark."

"Not smarter. Just less… damaged."

"Fair point."

Bob swiveled in his chair and looked out his window. It was a crappy view of the parking lot, with a distant glimpse of green tree line if you craned your neck.

"Back before he dropped those helicarriers into the Potomac, you were assigned to watch him, right? A honeypot position?"

Sharon didn't bother to answer. He'd hired her based on her performance during that debacle.

"You had to blow your cover early but… do you think you had him hooked?"

Sharon watched him watch her nod in the reflection of the window.

"Could you do it again?"

"Maybe. Give me three or four months…."

"You've got until this weekend. Everyone's given him some space because of the funeral but the pressure to sign is going to increase dramatically once..."

He faded off. Apparently some things were too blunt even for Bob Howard.

"Once Aunt Peg is in the ground," Sharon finished, her voice flat.

He nodded and had the grace to look abashed.

"Could you do it?"

She could. She knew it. He was vulnerable from grief. She could hit the right notes of nostalgia, offer a shy smile and bold stare. She could talk about Peggy and her thigh holster and maybe bring up the brief flirtation they'd shared in the hallways when he thought she was a neighborly nurse. He'd been achingly lonely back then and his whole demeanor had radiated a heady mix of skin hunger and wariness. Even small touches made him shudder. The reports were fairly detailed and he hadn't taken a lover since then.

"What would I be doing?"

Bob glanced sharply over his shoulder at her.

"Talking him out of signing the damned thing, of course."

"Why?"

Bob looked down over his glasses again and didn't answer.

"Bob, I want to hear your reasons," she sighed. "This isn't a small thing you're asking."

He thought for a moment before nodding.

"Because I'd like it if Captain _America_ didn't have to answer to the fucking United Nations," he huffed, frustrated into profanity. "I don't like the precedent, I don't like the optics, and I don't like the idea of the Maximoff girl following the orders of some international committee."

"If I convince him not to sign, he would have to retire, wouldn't he?"

"Sure… officially."

"He's a good man," she protested, but it was desultory. The idea of at least one enhanced human who wasn't shackled by the Accords had a certain unpleasant appeal. Especially if he was beholden to the Agency to provide cover for any extralegal activities.

"Doesn't mean he's going to play by the rules. You said so yourself."

She thought for a long moment. She didn't like the idea of manipulating. He was, after all, a good man. But she liked the idea of others manipulating him even less. And she might not have to use sex to do it, either. _That_ smacked of betrayal in a way that made her wince. If she was clever, she could do it all with a few choice words.

But should she?

What would Aunt Peg do? That had been her mantra since she was a teenager. Peg would tell Steve not to sign. She wouldn't do it with flirtation, either. She'd be direct about it. She'd offer that little lecture Peg liked about planting yourself like a tree. Not signing was the right thing to do and it never took much effort to convince Steve Rogers to do the right thing.

Aunt Peg was dead but Sharon could do her one last favor from the grave. Not because Bob Howard wanted her to. But because it was what Aunt Peg would do. Would have done.

But she wouldn't tell Bob that. She'd let Bob think she was doing it for him and he would offer Steve some protection, ease his way out of the Accords, offer him some options as a civilian. It was the practical thing to do, even if it was achieved in a slightly underhanded method.

And Peg would understand that, too.


	2. Aid and Comfort

_Charlotte Street, London, England_

He was, of course, perfectly polite. He was always and forever perfectly polite. Even when he was clearly drowning in sorrow, he politely offered to escort her back to her hotel after the funeral reception. They talked about Peggy for the whole ride, his large frame only a little hunched over in the back of the black cab. His knee kept jostling hers and every time he apologized but didn't move it his leg.

 _Death makes us crave human connection_ , she thought. _Steve more than most._

Under the perfect manners, the calm demeanor, she could still feel that essential loneliness that she remembered from when she was his "neighbor". She imagined it would always be there. He was a man out of time. Peggy had been one of his only tenuous connections to his old world and she was gone, and his obvious grief only amplified his solitude.

Her own grief felt heavier than she'd imagined. Peg been dying for a long time and Sharon thought she'd resigned herself to the looming loss. But she could feel a hollow place in her breastbone, a chill over her skin. She chafed her arms, craving a little warmth, craving contact…

She looked down and realized she hadn't moved her leg either.

He took her hand to help her out of the taxi and then paid for the cab, because of course he did. His hands were big and calloused and engulfed hers. Walking through the lobby, Sharon could feel the heat of his body through his somber suit and hers. They were still talking about Peggy, naturally.

"She bought me my first thigh holster."

"Practical."

"And stylish."

He smiled at her, that grin of his, and she smiled back, her eyes meeting his directly. Then she glanced away as she realized exactly what she was doing. She'd seen his face at the funeral, after she'd delivered that eulogy. He was not going to sign the Accords. Mission completed. She didn't _need_ to do this, to bring up thigh holsters and walk a little too close.

But she ached here and now. And he was so warm and so beautiful and so _kind_ , and they both missed Peg so much. And he was here… now.

She didn't need to do it. But she _wanted_ to.

They paused at the bank of elevators, and she could practically feel his body humming under his Seville Row suit. He _wanted_ , too. It didn't matter that it wasn't her that he wanted, not really. He wanted human connection, someone who shared his loss. He wanted Peggy.

She wanted Peg, too. She wanted her Aunt back. And even though she knew it was a bad idea, she wanted _him._ She wanted his big warm hands to slip the sorrow off her skin, she wanted the weight of his body to ground her in her grief. That would be enough, she thought. He thought it, too. She had a fleeting thought – _I should have asked Sam to drive me to the hotel. That would be less complicated –_ before she let her guard down and accepted that she wants this… this. But there was something, some last wall between them. She looked a question at him.

"I've been meaning to ask. Before, when you were spying on me from across the hall—"

"You mean when I was doing my _job_?"

He nodded, conceding her point. Because he was always fair.

"Did Peggy know?"

Ah.

"She kept so many secrets. I didn't want her to have one from you."

"Sure," he said as some tension left his shoulders and they stared at each other.

The elevator dinged.

"Thanks for walking me back…" she tailed off suggestively, swaying towards him.

"Steve," Sam's voice interrupted. "There's something you've gotta see."

She could almost hear it pop, their little bubble of attraction mingled with grief and longing. The moment passed with a small regretful sigh.

He glanced at her with an apologetic grimace and waited for her to nod permission, because Sarah Rogers taught him to never just walk away from a lady, and then hurried after Sam, his long legs eating up the distance in easy strides. She took a second to admire the view. Tony must have given Steve the name of his personal tailor. No way did an off-the-rack suit fit fall that perfectly from those broad shoulders down to his narrow waist. He must draw the eye of every heterosexual woman –

She glanced around and noticed that, in fact, _no one_ was watching Steve Rogers walk across the lobby. They were all glued to their phones or clustered around the TV screens.

Sharon hurried after the men, pulling her turned-off phone out of her bag. As the phone powered up, she divided her attention between the news on the TV at the bar and listening to Sam's _sotto vocce_ explanation of what had happened in Vienna. _Oh shit._ She thumbed past the mounting voicemails – 24, now 25 – and went straight to the encrypted text app.

 **Bob Howard** : You up to date?

 **Sharon Carter** : Catching up as we speak.

 **BH** : You're headed back to Berlin. Your task force is getting a new boss, a blowhard named Ross.

 **SC** : Sec State?!

 **BH** : No, a *different* blowhard named Ross. Everett Ross. No relation.

 **SC** : Assignment?

 **BH** : Give all due aid and comfort to Captain America and to the Task Force.

 **SC** : In that order?

 **BH** : In that order. There's a Quinjet waiting for you at Heathrow. The passenger manifest is for three people and assorted cargo.

 **SC** : Names?

 **BH** : Sharon Carter, Michael Jones, and John Howard. Agent Young will meet you there.

 **SC** : What's Sec State Ross telling Blowhard Ross to do?

 **BH** : Shoot to kill.

Sharon's head snapped up. Steve and Sam were conferring, not really paying attention to her and she had a minute to process the information.

If they caught Barnes, they'd have a handle on Steve. He'd do anything, sign anything, to help Bucky. If they killed Barnes, he'd… She didn't know what.

She buttonholed a hotel concierge, who was happy to help Captain America, his grandmother had fought in the war and had seen Captain Rogers once…. They got set up in a conference room on the second floor, one with a landline and a TV screen. It took her half an hour of phone calls to get fully up to speed, to make plans, to lay in contingencies.

Making sure the U.N. didn't get a short leash on Captain America was her first priority now. She looked up at Sam and Steve who were still riveted to the television.

"I've got to go to work."

Steve glanced over at her, his face devastated and confused. The tragedy in Lagos, the new lead on Bucky, Peggy's death, _another_ new lead on Bucky – it was too much all at once, a trainwreck of emotions. And she knew that if Ross managed to kill Barnes, it would break Captain America.

 _All due aid and comfort._

"I'm catching a plane to Vienna," she smiled. "Want a ride?"

"I don't think—" Steve started.

"I've got a private quinjet and IDs for Michael Jones and Robert Howard with your pictures on them."

Once again, she saw the tension ease from his shoulders. Behind him, Sam gave her a sharp look and then, slowly, a grateful nod.

"Thank you. We'd love a ride."


	3. Subject-Matter Expert

_U.N. Building, Vienna, Austria_

For a few hours, Sharon had to trust that Sam and Steve could muddle through the complexities of being "undercover" without her help. Lord help them both, but they seemed to think that "disguise" meant putting on a baseball cap and a t-shirt. And they were always such _tight_ T-shirts. Hadn't either of them ever heard of a goddamned big and tall store? She wanted to grab their necks and shake them, like rookie agents. Or naughty puppies. Then she wanted to give them a two-hour crash course in basic covert protocols. But she had work to do.

Ross was exactly what Bob had said: a blowhard. She arrived at the site less than two hours after the phone call, but it took her another half an hour to make her way through the layers of bureaucracy to actually see him.

"Who are you?" he snapped at her as she finally found him in a Cetron Mobile Command Hub on the edge of the rubble.

"Sharon Carter, CIA," she stuck out her hand. He scowled but shook.

"Where have you been? I was told you are my subject-matter expert?"

"At my aunt's funeral, sir, in London. I flew out as soon as I heard."

Ross was a blowhard but he wasn't stupid. She could practically watch as he put together the pieces: Funeral, London, last name 'Carter', Bucky Barnes. His eyes lit up a little.

"Then you are just the person I need," he snapped his fingers at a sour looking woman in a grey windbreaker that said BVT across the chest. "Here, you, Frau Gusen, I need you to work with Agent Carter here. You have a team of five to help sort through this… mess."

And with that, he turned his back on her.

"I suppose it's nice to be trusted," she muttered to herself before switching to German. "Frau Gusen, it's a pleasure to meet you, I am Sharon Carter with the CIA."

"Welcome to Vienna, Agent Carter," Frau Gusen responded, in English, her mouth locked down in a tight unhappy line.

"I'm sorry we have to meet in these awful conditions." She made sure that the words were neutral but swept a glance that managed to include Ross as one of the 'awful conditions.'

Gusen raised an eyebrow in surprise and her mouth softened. A little. "I am, too."

"What are we working on?"

"We have been put in charge of sorting through the _feuerwehrschlauch_ of calls from around the world. It seems the Winter Solider is like your Elvis, yes?"

Sharon did some half-assed translation in her head and figured that _feuerwehrschlauch_ was "fire group hose", which was probably an understatement.

"I can only imagine," she winced. "Can you show me what you've got set up so far?"

What they had so far was a top-notch, well organized, and comprehensive vetting system with five other BVT agents who were experienced in data mining and large-scale disasters. Information was pouring in from intelligence agencies all over the world and it was getting sorted through Frau Gusen's hands. Gusen - a white woman in her mid forties wearing a salt-and-pepper ponytail - reminded Sharon a lot of a gunnery sergeant she'd known back at the Triskelion. Efficient, effective, and completely without a sense of humor.

She could work with that.

It didn't take long for her to get read onto the analysis team. As one of the Agency's point-women on the "enhanced human situation," she was thoroughly debriefed on all aspects of the two-year hunt for Barnes, both the official and the unofficial. Consummate professionals, members of the BVT team appreciated her insights and knowledge and welcomed her into their group.

It was another hour before the first real lead came through. A low-level SRI agent with a _thing_ for enhanced humans had been pestering his station chief for six months about the Winter Soldier living in a flat in the Ferentari area of Bucharest.

The station chief sent the information along, carefully couched in qualifiers – the guy in question also insisted Thor took saunas at the Grand Continental – but attached his report and a few crappy cell phone videos. The vids showed a man wearing a heavy winter jacket and low cap browsing through the history sections at an English-language bookshop called Anthony Frost. If it was Barnes, he shared Steve's attitude towards disguises: a baseball cap that didn't hide the fact that he was wearing _exact same haircut_ he'd worn in D.C. The team almost dismissed it without watching the whole video but the note had included a suggestion that they watch to the end.

The man in the video reached out to pick up a book and his sleeve rode up. There was a flash of silver between the cuff and the glove. It could have been just an old-fashioned man's watch, common enough in Romania, but the man reacted strongly, yanking his jacket down hard and dropping the book.

Then he looked around, a little wild-eyed, and the video froze on a perfectly framed shot of James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes. The Winter Soldier.

"That's him." Sharon said, her voice steady.

The operative had tracked him back to a flat and Sharon scribbled the address on a scrap of paper and waited for Frau Gusen to take it to Ross. She'd be able to slip Steve the-

"Frau Carter," Gusen's humorless voice interrupted her. "Would you please take this information to Herr Ross?"

Sharon blinked, staring at Gusen for a few moments. Had she figured out Sharon's ulterior mission? Did she want to help Steve?

No. The more likely answer was that Ross was an asshole and Gusen didn't want to deal with him.

"Of course," she managed a smile that was both grateful and regretful. Gusen shrugged a non-apology with clear subtext: _he's_ your _pain in the ass;_ you _deal with him._

Sharon kept her face straight as she jotted some notes, shuffled some paper, and then jogged over to the Command Center. Though the dead and wounded were long gone, the scene was still noisy chaos, with sirens and first responders and forensic experts working hard, heads down over the explosion site. As long as she didn't look too gleeful at this unexpected opportunity, it was unlikely anyone would notice her planned detour. She'd done some quick googling on way to the airport and planned a meet with the men at a cafe that was about the right distance from the explosion.

And there they were, two well-muscled Americans being overtly casual on the edge of a disaster scene. Subtle. And Steve was _on the phone._ A _cell_ phone. Okay, probably one of Stark's little black-box jobs, but Steve _had_ to realize that Stark was going to get involved some point soon, right? Jesus Christ on a pogo stick, please save her from amateurs.

Steve hung up and went into the café, leaning against the bar with studied nonchalance. He and Sam stood side by side, conspicuously not looking at one another as they spoke. Sharon glanced around and assured herself that all the observant people were still focused on the rubble, gathered her temper, and then walked in.

"Tips have been flooding in since that picture went viral. Everyone thinks that the Winter Soldier goes to their gym. Most of them are just noise. Except this one," she slid a folder across the bar. It contained a bunch of random papers that had nothing to do with anything. The relevant address was written on the back flap of the folder along with the name of a private pilot who was on standby at Vienna International. She hoped he'd figure it out. This would be much easier if Natasha was working with him again.

"My boss is expecting a briefing pretty much now, so this is all the head start you'll get. And you'd better hurry. Our orders are to shoot on sight."

Steve flinched, a single pained flash of terror that made him look sixteen years old. Losing Bucky would break him. She wasn't sure what happened when you broke a good man, but she was sure it wasn't something she wanted to see. She couldn't let that happen. The country owed him more than that. She owed Peg more than that.

He thanked her, politely, and she had to walk away again. Now came the hard part.


	4. Distract, Derail, Delay

_Task Force Command and Control, Vienna, Austria_

Sharon ran the numbers in her head as she walked away from the café. It was half an hour to the airport in traffic and fifty-minute flight from the Vienna to Bucharest, if the pilot was willing to redline it. She'd paid him a _lot_ to be willing to redline it. Even if the boys suited up in the plane, they needed to get from Henri Coandă International to the Ferentari ghetto, say another half an hour. That meant she needed to manufacture at least a two-hour delay.

"Sharon Carter here to see Deputy Ross," she presented her credentials to the UN Peacekeeper. He waved her in with only a cursory glance. She ground her teeth and weighed the desire to ream him out with the desire to keep eyes off of her until Steve was out of town.

Romanov was in with Ross and Sharon hoped she covered up the slight hitch in her step when she noticed.

"Sorry to interrupt. We've got a lead," she held out the folder.

Ross took the folder without a word, but Romanov asked, "Where?" She still had soot on her cheek and stains on her somber purple suit.

"The Ferentari in Bucharest," Sharon was careful not to meet Romanov's eyes too directly. Too much eye contact was a dead giveaway.

"That's gonna be a fun extraction," the redhead craned her neck to look over Ross's shoulder. Sharon was always surprised at how short she was. You'd think a legend would be taller.

"I've never been to Romania," Sharon admitted. "Have you worked with the Romanian Intelligence before?"

"Not from this side," the Black Widow smiled her famous smile.

Ross frowned up from the file folder, sharing his annoyance equally between the two women. Sharon realized that the blustery demeanor was his "cop face", the way that cool detachment was Romanov's.

She had to tread carefully.

"Romanov, why don't you head to Romania, check out-," Ross started.

"Sir," Sharon raised her finger. "Agent Romanov has signed the Accords. We'll need U.N. approval before we send her anywhere."

Romanov darted a glance at Sharon before she nodded in agreement. "I'm grounded for this."

"Carter, you are the subject matter expert-" Ross started again but Romanov interrupted this time.

"She's Peggy's niece and was involved in that whole nightmare back in D.C. He'll spot her coming a mile away."

Sharon put on a chagrined face and shrugged agreement.

Ross frowned, his hobbit-like brow furrowing as he worked through the implications of their situation. Sharon waited, patiently. It was all obvious to her and, she glanced over, to Romanov. But Ross needed a few minutes to catch up. Since she needed a two-hour delay, she was happy to let him take his time.

"We can't send Iron Man or War Machine, they both signed to Accords and it will take a few hours to get everyone to approve," Ross started and Sharon managed not to roll her eyes. Oh God, he was the kind of boss who thought out loud to his subordinates. She carefully didn't look at Romanov because she wasn't sure she'd manage to hide her disdain if she caught Romanov's smirk. "We could send a single scout to break into the flat and confirm that he's living there. But if Barnes catches the scout, it will be a PR nightmare."

"And the agent would probably be killed," Sharon said, raising her eyebrows in disapproval.

"I'm _sure_ that's what Deputy Ross _meant_ to say," drawled the Black Widow.

Ross didn't even have the grace to look embarrassed. He waved the women's objections away.

"The Bucharest police don't have any force that can handle someone like Barnes," he continued, plodding his way through the obvious. "The SRI should have a Special Forces team that can handle him though."

 _Finally!_ Sharon let the exasperated thought play over her face because Romanov was almost certainly watching her. There was a second-too-long pause in conversation while Ross looked at them, as if he expected them to burst into applause for his astounding feat of mental agility.

Both at the same time, Sharon and Natasha spoke over one another, "The SRI—" "Sir, I don't—"

Sharon gestured for Romanov to speak. Romanov smiled thanks.

Ross made an impatient noise.

"The Romanian Intelligence means well," Romanov continued. "But the SRI is underfunded, understaffed, and underprepared. Barnes would tear through them like wet tissue paper. Even their most elite team couldn't handle Barnes on their best day and their most elite team is probably not in Bucharest."

"Where would they be, then?" Ross snapped.

"On the border with Ukraine, sir," Sharon stepped in. "There have been some … situations there."

Ross, again, didn't bother to be ashamed. He just chewed on the information and made his way, slowly, to the next station on the logic train.

"The best-trained team is headquartered in Berlin," he said, finally.

"Yes, sir," Sharon said, putting exaggerated patience into her voice. "They are specifically attached to this task force, in fact. And standing by."

From the corner where Romanov had retreated, Sharon heard a barely audible snicker.

"We need to send our team to Bucharest. Confront Barnes in force with civilian military."

" _Civilian_ military, sir?"

"Non-enhanced," Ross snapped. "Not the Avengers. You know. _Human_."

There was a long _long_ pause as Sharon carefully didn't look over at Romanov and Romanov loudly didn't say anything.

After a moment, Ross flushed.

"You know what I mean," he blustered. "Carter, get the team moving on this location in Bucharest."

"Yes, sir," said Sharon, without moving to leave.

"Ross, let us back you up," Romanov stepped out of her corner, her voice softly urgent. "Rhodey and I have both signed the Accords. While the team gets from Berlin to Bucharest, get our involvement authorized. There are enough members of the U.N. still on the scene, it shouldn't take long. We know Barnes. We can help."

"Absolutely not! I won't have those damned _inhumans_ on the ground again."

"Sir!" Sharon gasped in shocked disapproval, not all of it playacted.

"I understand your… hesitation," Romanov managed to be soothing and wry at the same time. "But I assure you, Colonel Rhodes and I are both perfectly human."

Ross fumed and glared and turned red but did not answer. The tension in the room grew unpleasant and thick.

"Sir?" Sharon finally stepped in. She had to back Romanov's play, even if she didn't want to. Anything else would look suspicious. "Think of the press if it goes badly."

She managed to put enough disgust in her voice to communicate just what she thought of that, to Romanov and even to Ross.

"Yes, fine, whatever. Carter! Go! I apparently have to round up members of the U.N. to authorize Black Widow and War Machine to back up us mere humans."

Sharon nodded, face sour, before she turned and left. Romanov followed on her heels.

They women walked through the disaster scene without speaking for several seconds before Romanov spoke.

"How's Steve holding up?"

The personal question made Sharon blink and pause as she tried to switch gears, mentally. When she didn't answer right away, Romanov continued, "I saw him right after the funeral. He looked … not great."

"He's not great," Sharon agreed. "He walked me back to my hotel after the reception. We didn't have a lot of time to talk before we got the news about Vienna, but he's was already rocky before we heard about Bucky."

"I'm sorry about your loss, too," Romanov put her hand on Sharon's wrist. "Peggy was an exceptional woman."

The sympathy from such an unexpected quarter triggered a flood of grief and Sharon found herself blinking away tears suddenly.

"Thank you, Agent Romanov."

"Please, call me Natasha," the red head smiled gently. "Any friend of Peggy's is a friend of mine."

"Thank you, Natasha," Sharon managed, her voice strained with tears.

Romanov smiled and casually looked away, pretending to study some random object in order to give Sharon time to pull herself together. More than most, Romanov would understand that Sharon couldn't cry in public, not if she wanted to retain her credibility.

 _Peggy would have understood, too,_ Sharon thought, dashing away a few tears.

"Okay, I need to get the Berlin team started," Sharon said after a moment.

"Good luck," Romanov smiled. "I suspect we're _all_ going to need it over the next couple of days."

 _Some of us more than others,_ Sharon thought. _Be safe, Steve._


	5. Emotionally Compromised

_Task Force HQ, Berlin, German_

Sharon startled out of a light doze as the quinjet touched down on the roof the HQ. Her body clock was screwed up to hell and gone – she'd gone from DC to London to Vienna in less than 36 hours. Not to mention the emotional roller coaster. She was tired, physically and mentally.

 _Welcome to the glamorous life of a CIA agent,_ she snorted. _Up and at 'em._

She had to shake Ross awake and he scowled at her like it was her fault that he'd fallen asleep. Sharon ignored the scowl and fished out the bottle of ibuprofen that she kept stashed in her work bag, dry swallowing three. She thought about offering some to Ross but decided he could ask if he needed them. He didn't ask.

"When does the team land?" he scrubbed his hair as they deplaned.

"They should have landed fifteen minutes ago. They geared up on the plane and will need forty-five minutes to get to the target address," Sharon explained for fifth time, not bothering to hide her exasperation.

Ross might be a little slow, but he was smart. Well, smart enough. He wasn't asking her for repetitive recitations of the timeline because he'd forgotten it. She didn't know him well enough to know _why_ he did it, but all of the likely options made him an asshole. It could be that his ego liked it when he exercised petty power over his minions. Or over women. It could be that he disliked her, personally, for her second-hand connections to the various players involved. Or because she looked like his first wife. It could just be a nervous habit. Or…

A sudden thought chilled her.

It could be that he was probing her for inconsistencies.

She stared at the back of his head for a second as they walked down the hallways. He was abrasive and a little dull. His pale gray suit was nice enough but not bespoke. His blue tie was silk, sure, but it was cheap silk. She'd never heard of him before today. He wasn't related to Secretary of State Ross, Bob had been clear about that.

How did a boring little man – someone without brilliance or charisma or wealth or connections or reputation - land on top of the team in charge of the most high-profile international clusterfuck the world had seen in ten years? She could think of two options. One, he was a scapegoat. Sec State Ross expected this to go sideways and he wanted someone he could sacrifice. In that case, he was a blessing for her _sub rosa_ mission. The blame was already aimed at him and she just needed to stay out of the way. Two, he was a ringer. A counter-intelligence genius buried in the bureaucracy and brought out in this time of dire need. If that was the case, he was probably probing for inconsistencies and was a bigger danger than she'd imagined. Regardless, her mission parameters stayed the same: stay the hell out of the way.

There was always the terrifying possible third option. Ross was the best man that they could find to head the team.

She tucked the puzzle away in her head, filed under "worry about later", because they'd reached the communications room.

Agent Romanov nodded to them as they entered. Her famously lush lips folded in a tight line, radiating anger. Ross had managed to get authorization for War Machine to back up the Special Forces team, but not Romanov. To be fair, he hadn't tried very hard. Romanov had watched the whole thing, including the bits where he'd declared that she was most likely "emotionally compromised _"_ and then the Italian delegate made a crack about her sleeping with Rogers. She was pissed and wasn't bothering to hide it. Sharon wondered, idly, if Ross cared that he had made an enemy for life.

"Okay, folks, let's do this," Ross announced, clapping his hands and rubbing them together, as if this was a training exercise or _futbal_ scrum. Not watching the balloon go up in a potentially deadly operation more than a thousand kilometers away. If Barnes _was_ there, people were very likely to die.

She hoped, again, that Steve and Sam had gotten there early enough to get Barnes out of sight. That was the best option, not just for Steve, not just for her, but also for the men and women about to head into harm's way.

On the wall of screens, Sharon watched as the German team established a perimeter around a mid-century high rise that managed to combine concrete sterility and seedy despair.

" _There are two men inside,"_ the German spotter reported, his voice as clear as if he was in the same room.

 _No best option, today._ Sharon clenched her jaw and leaned forward.

"Operation is go," Ross said in English. "Go now."

"Verschluss! Schnell!" The team breeched. Or rather, it _tried_ to breech.

The battering ram hit the cheap hollow door and… didn't budge. The spotter fired a flash bang through the newspaper-covered windows and… nothing happened.

"What the hell is going on?" Ross turned to her.

"How should I know?" she snapped and looked back at the screens.

Then, suddenly, all hell broke loose.

"There's Barnes!" Ross shouted. "And… is that _Rogers_? What the _fuck_?"

Each member of the task force had a camera and a microphone piped right into the communications room and the video wall burst into a kaleidoscope of violent motion and frantic noise. Sharon forced herself to focus on one screen, following the action from the camera of the team leader. There was Barnes, dark hair and dark beard, hollow cheeks and hollow eyes. His fist flashed – _literally_ flashed, a slash of silver – in the dim lighting of the fire stair. And here was Steve, all smooth strength and graceful speed right behind him.

Picking out a narrative in the action was tricky, especially with Ross shouting commands and the confused voices over the microphones. The only thing that was clear was that Barnes was running. Sharon had seen him in action in D.C., watched all the video. She knew he could be racking up a body count like it was HALO night, but he wasn't. All of his actions were defensive; he never threw the first punch, just reacted when someone else did. He was just running.

Steve had been right.

Steve was pretty much always right.

The cameras were most consistently on Barnes, who stayed in front of the action. In her brief glimpses of Steve, she saw him punching Barnes and shielding Barnes, kicking soldiers and catching them as they plummeted down the stairwell. He was fighting a two-front battle against two warring sides, all while pulling his punches.

And he looked beautiful while doing it.

 _Damn, Peg. You had_ excellent _taste in men._

Then Barnes went out the goddamned window.

In Berlin, a chorus of gasps rose around the C&C room, open mouthed in wonder as Barnes jumped fifteen stories to a lower roof. Even Ross shut the hell up for a few seconds to watch the feat of –

" _Scheiße! Es gibt eine dritte Mann!"_ the helicopter pilot squawked, forgetting herself and speaking in German. There was a third person on the roof!

"Get me a camera on that roof!" bellowed Ross. A tech was already on it, scrabbling frantically at the keyboard, all the while muttering that he was trying, he was almost there, he hadn't had this one queued up already, who would imagine that Barnes would _jump two hundred feet down…_

"You should have known, damnit!" Ross was starting to get a little red around the face and Sharon had a minute to wish a heart attack on him before a distant camera with a crappy angle popped up on the central screen.

"Who the fuck is _that?"_ Ross rounded on Sharon, his voice sounded strangled by his mounting fury.

"I have no idea," she gaped.

The figure on the roof was wearing all black and going punch for punch with Barnes, moving in a graceful but… weirdly acrobatic way. Sharon glanced over to ensure herself that Romanov was still in the room then squinted back at the poor-quality video. No, the figure was definitely male. The man had the shoulders-to-waist-ratio of a Dorito, but moved like a dancer. Or like a …

"Is he dressed like a _cat_?" she asked, straightening back up.

"Is that Wilson?"

"That's not Sam," Romanov said from the corner.

"Great, another freak in a leotard, just what this situation needs," Ross snarled. "Open fire! Shoot Barnes! Shoot them both! _Now!"_

The helicopter's gunner opened up as Sharon and Romanov both rounded on Ross.

" _Tell them to stop shooting!"_ Romanov demanded, her voice like a whip that cut across Sharon's outraged gasp. "You can not do that, sir!"

Rearing back, Ross glanced away from Romanov to glare at Sharon. "The hell I can't, Agent Carter."

"Sir, we don't know who that is. You do not have the authorization to just _murder_ random people."

"I have shoot-to-kill orders on Barnes. If some whack job gets in the way, that is not my—"

" _Scheiße!"_ the helicopter pilot shouted on her microphone and all debate stopped for a second as they looked up and watched as the video feed from the chopped began to wheel wildly, flashing sky and then skyscraper and then ground and then sky again, in rapid, dizzying succession.

" _That's_ Sam," Natasha said, as the camera careened past a small dark figure in the sky. She stalked across the room, getting very close to Ross's face. "And you will _not_ shoot at Sam Wilson. Or at Steve Rogers. Or at random people who you cannot identify. _Do you understand me?"_

Ross's face shifted from red to purple and for a second Sharon thought he'd spit defiance. But his own personal sense of safety suddenly kicked in. He glanced away from Romanov, looking around the room for support. He got back stares that ranged from blankly neutral to actively hostile. Then he looked back down at Romanov, who was regarding him with a cool half-smile that somehow conveyed a threat.

He may have had the legal high ground, but he was outmuscled here and now. And he knew it.

Sharon reached out and thumbed on the microphone.

"Do not shoot except at Barnes," she said, in German and then in English, to be sure. "Repeat, we do not have kill authorization for anyone but Barnes."

Romanov shot her a hard glare.

"Those are our orders from the U.N.," Sharon apologized, making her regret apparent.

Romanov opened her mouth to say something and then her head whipped around to stare at the monitors.

"Holy crap, Rogers," she gasped, watching Steve repeat Barnes's insane jump. He flew out the window and seemed to hang in the air at the same time that he plummeted to the roof, barely landing on the ledge. One foot shorter and he would have fallen to the ground.

"They are killing me," Sharon muttered in agreement.

Ross, behind them, made a strangled noise and stomped around so that he could see.

"It's going to wind up in the streets," Sharon realized. "What's Barnes's most probable route out of the city?"

"He won't take the most probable route," Romanov murmured, _sotto voce_.

"Right. I need every street cam for a half mile radius queued up and ready to go, please" Sharon said to the technicians as the combatants _all leapt directly into traffic_. "Damnit, don't these people have any respect for gravity? Marconi, your team is in charge of tracking him and coordinating with the other teams. Make sure that we have eyes on him for every step. Lulić, I want you to talk to the Bucharest P.D., make sure they know what's going on. This is a street-level chase now and I want everyone to know everything. Holy crap! Did you _see that?"_

Sharon boggled as Steve bodychecked _a moving car,_ pulling the driver out and flinging his body across the asphalt like a rag doll.

"Ambulances!" she pointed. "Weber, your team runs dispatch for the emergency response. Coordinate with Lulić."

Beside her, Romanov said in low voice, "Rhodey."

"Hell yes," Sharon turned to order War Machine onto the field and then caught sight of Ross. He looked apoplectic – she guessed he was torn between purpling outrage that she'd taken over the C&C room, thwarted fury at having his kill command belayed, and, under it all, relief that she had stepped in to take control just as the whole thing went pear shaped. She had just made herself the scapegoat.

Well, hell.

She took a breath, realized she'd already stepped in it, and decided to just embrace it.

"Sir, while you call the authorities to get on-the-ground clearance for War Machine, I can handle this operational trivia," she gave him a direct stare. "You're going to want to coordinate the P.R. efforts, too."

He could break one of two ways. He could stomp and fume about her insubordination or he could be grateful for the chance to shift the blame to her, with the face-saving bonus that he'd be dealing with the big boys at the U.N. and far away from this room, with all the people who had just watched him be humiliated.

For a heartbeat, she thought he'd scream at her but she could _watch_ him think it through.

"Thank you, Agent Carter. Carry on," he waved his hand with a flip.

As he rushed out of the C&C, Romanov shot her a smile and Sharon found herself grinning back.

"Any idea who the guy in the black suit is?" Sharon asked Romanov, quietly.

"Maybe."

Sharon glanced over but Romanov merely continued to stare at the screens.

 _She's Fury's left hand,_ Sharon reminded herself. _Don't trust her._

The chase was insane, especially coming in fragmented snatches from jouncing video cameras mounted on vests and cars. There was the dangling foot of Cat Dude hanging off of Wilson. But the central image, on most of the screens, was Barnes's upright figure, running. Just running, brutally fast, while passing cars, dodging attacks. Even when he grabbed a moving motorcycle out from under its driver, he was alone in the lead. The dark solitary figure, indistinct in the dim tunnel, looked small and resolute. Sharon had never seen such a lonely thing in her life.

Everyone in the universe was in pursuit, it seemed. The screens strobed with flashing lights and she could hear SRI, Bucharest PD, and her own special forces team all shouting in a cacophony of languages over the various lines. She didn't speak Romanian but the tone was certainly clear enough.

Then, finally, it broke out from under the tunnel. Steve's stolen car flipped and he launched himself out of it, outrunning the tumbling SUV and emerging from the rising dust in time to pile drive his shield into Cat Dude. The black-clad figure skidded away and even over the poor microphone quality, she could hear his claws scraping down the asphalt.

Colonel Rhodes landed with a whine and thump, holding up his hands. And, like Peg's goddamned tree, Steve planted himself between Bucky and… everyone. He was going to protect Bucky from War Machine, from Cat Dude, and from every cop, soldier, special forces fighter, and _fucking meter maid_ in Bucharest, who were all converging on the scene at once in a howl of sirens.

Everyone in the C&C room held their breath, waiting to see if the fight would resume again. Then Steve holstered his shield and the Cat Dude took off his mask and the silence broke out in shocked gasps and whispers.

Sharon looked over at Romanov.

Romanov looked utterly unsurprised.

 _Don't trust Romanov,_ Sharon reminded herselfbefore she took a deep breath and refocused on the situation. 

"Well, that's a shocker, folks, but I need you to concentrate on your jobs. Weber, I want a report every ten minutes on how many ambulances we have on site and how many more you're pulling in and from where? Make sure you're pulling in help from the Stark Foundation if you need to pay for them. Lulić, get the local U.N. representative to make sure that the SRI and police forces don't feel too left out of the loop. We're going to want Barnes all to ourselves, however. Novak, you and Dubois go brief Ross… don't look at me like that, I'll be in to relieve you in fifteen minutes. Let's focus, please. We have work to do."

She still had work to do, too. Barnes was in custody but not dead. That gave a short leash on Steve, but at least he hadn't lost his best friend. Now to see what sort of damage control she could manage from here.

"You're very good at this," Romanov said.

"Thank you," Sharon glanced over and caught the spy staring at her with cool distant eyes.

"You're welcome. I've got to go call Tony," Romanov turned left and Sharon watched her go with deep and growing sense of unease.


	6. Blue-Eyed Handsome Man

_**Two Hours later -**_ _Task Force HQ, Berlin, German_

"The quinjet lands in fifteen minutes. Novak, tell me you've got the air hookups ready, please?"

"Yes, ma'am. Tech just finished them."

"And why weren't they hooked up in the first place?" Ross said, rounding on poor Novak.

Sharon stood up from her desk, putting herself between her boss and her subordinate. She clenched her fist and then released it, an old spy's trick for managing a calm that seemed sincere.

"Because we had shoot-to-kill orders and no one anticipated a need for the prison box," she said, emphasizing "no one" slightly. After all, he was _in charge_ of the task force. Then, with deliberate delay, she added, "Sir."

Ross went back to muttering into his chins. He was furious and unstable, ready to lash out at the least provocation. Not only had she and Romanov humiliated him in front of his subordinates, he'd gotten reamed out by Secretary of State Ross.

It had been, putatively, a private reaming. But the whole damned HQ was made of glass walls and everyone could see their faces, if not hear the screaming. There was some unkind commentary among the staff that Sharon had been very careful not to hear. Dubois, in particular, had offered a Don Dunphy-style fight commentary, replacing her usual Irish lilt with a dead-pan 1940s Brooklyn accent.

"It's the Battle of the Rosses here today in Berlin, folks, and we're seeing two of the most entitled asses America has ever offered slug it out. The Greater Ross has just taken a swing, a _swing_ I say, and ooh, the Lesser Ross looks like he bit into a rotten lemon, that was a palpable hit, ladies and gentlemen! One must assume that was directed specifically at the fact that he just ordered his troops to fire on the absolute ruler of a sovereign nation. A really really rich one, too, folks! Oooh, and here we have a mean uppercut that has _got_ to be about shooting at Captain America with cameras everywhere! Look at the Lesser Ross stagger! This is not a fair fight! Look at him stumble around the ring!"

It was both hilarious and devastating and finally Sharon had had to invent a chore for Dubois because she wasn't sure she could keep her face straight any more.

Since he'd emerged from the reaming, Ross had been spoiling for a fight and Sharon had spent her time defusing him while trying to manage the team's preparations for holding a super soldier with a vibranium arm.

She turned to the monitor again, where the techs were cleaning up their tools with slightly undue haste. Careful not to gnaw her lip, she stared at the various air hookups for The Box.

That what they were calling it, apparently without irony. The Box. A cube about the size of a crappy service elevator with clear aluminum sides and a chair that had specially re-enforced straps – clamps, actually – for holding Barnes into place. Ross had explained that they could administer a painful, "but non-lethal," shock. It looked like something from a futuristic BDSM porn shoot, frankly. Sharon had grave and complicated doubts about it.

There was no way it would hold Barnes if he wanted to get out. Like everyone in the CIA's Enhanced Humans Division, she'd read all the files on Barnes and she was pretty sure that he could bust out without too much trouble. So far, he was sitting quietly in it on the quinjet, but he was also flying at 60,000 feet and surrounded by a SWAT team with shoot-to-kill orders, not to mention Steve Rogers. (Sam and the King of Wakanda were there, too, but without their gear, and thus she discounted them in a bad fight.) He was going to be docile in that company.

What's more, the thing violated the Geneva Convention six ways to Sunday. She was willing to give it a reluctant pass as a temporary measure in place for the trip from Bucharest to Berlin, but the fact that Ross ordered those air hookups seemed to suggest a something more long-term.

She looked around the room. Her team were all working hard, but looking very uncomfortable. The ubiquitous cameras were all recording. Weighting her choices, she didn't like any of the options. But, by God, Peg wouldn't have put up with this and neither would she.

"Sir, about the box?"

Ross turned his scowl towards her.

Sharon waited. The tense silence drew attention and slowly the clicking of keyboards slowed.

Finally, Ross snapped, "What about it, Agent Carter?"

"How long do we expect Barnes to be held inside?"

"The rest of his mangy life," Ross snapped. _Mangy?_

"No, sir."

"What did you say, Carter?"

"I said no, sir. Long term incarceration in that violates the Geneva Convention, sir."

"He's an animal," Ross didn't quite shout. "Who cares?"

"I do, sir."

Ross just stared at her, the color rising from his collar, his jowls starting to shiver just a little. Sharon though, for a second, that she'd pushed him too far. But again, she could practically _watch_ as his political instincts kicked in and he looked around the room. The room full of witnesses, E.U. citizens, one and all, staring at him with hard eyes. She could see the moment that he remembered he wasn't in a back room in D.C., where Gitmo and Abu Ghraib and waterboarding got casually rubberstamped. No, they were sitting in the heart of _Berlin._ You had to walk by a memorial dedicated to the victims of the Shoah to get to this building.

The Geneva Conventions _had teeth_ here.

 _And Bucky is a blue-eyed handsome man,_ Sharon thought, uncharitably. _Eventually, he'll realize that putting a pretty white boy from Brooklyn, a WWII vet even, won't play well on the evening news back in the U.S._

"Your objections have been noted, Cater," he said, though the words nearly strangled him.

"Thank you, sir," Sharon paused and then… "I'll make a note of it in my memo to the Director and to the Secretary of State."

The color in Ross's face spiked again, the purple nearly reaching the tips of his ears, and Sharon reminded herself that the emergency code in Berlin was 112, not 911. But he took some deep breaths and ground his teeth, audibly, and Sharon wondered if she'd just killed her own career.

 _Like a tree_ , she reminded herself.

Lulić signaled and Sharon sighed, grateful for the change of subject.

"They have landed, sir," she gestured and together, they went to meet Captain America, criminal.


	7. Women's Work

_Still at the Damned Task Force HQ, Berlin, German_

 _Who the hell thought see-through walls were a good idea in the headquarters of an intelligence agency?_ Sharon mused, watching Stark prowl around Steve.

The answer, once she'd articulated the question, was obvious. _Spies_. Spies were used to being watched and wanted to watch everyone in return. This whole place was a spy palace.

She glanced over at Romanov, who was watching the two men.

Neither of them could hear anything, of course, but the body language was all but shouting. Steve was, putatively, the criminal. But he sat at the head of the table, calm and certain. Stark, in his $10,000 suit and red power tie, was nominally in charge, acting as a proxy for Secretary Ross. But he looked, frankly, like he was on the ass end of a four-day bender. If his tie got any more limp, sad, or wrinkly, Sharon thought she might slip him some Viagra out of mercy.

Stark stalked around the room, jittery almost, coxing, cajoling, pleading, for Steve to come in from the cold. And Steve was… thinking about it.

Well, _shit_.

"Pepper left him, you know?"

Sharon managed not to whip around at the sound of the voice near her ear, but it was a close thing. She took a deep breath to calm her rabbitting heart and turned to Romanov.

"Pepper Potts? She left Stark?"

"It's why he's in a such a state. He wouldn't have agreed to this Accords nonsense if she hadn't. But she did and he did and here we are."

Sharon didn't say anything.

"After New York, Pepper and I tried to get him into therapy, you know?" Romanov's smile was completely without humor. "He always swore to her that he was going to but somehow he never did. He made these little half-assed attempts, to try and placate her. He talked to Bruce, once, so he could tell Pepper he'd spoken to a doctor. Then he built this ridiculous toy that let him 'hack his hippocampus.' But in the end, he didn't want to do the work and Pepper couldn't do it for him anymore."

Sharon glanced past the two heroes in the glass box to where Ross and Ross were chewing over the details of what came next. The Lesser Ross seemed to feel her eyes on him and shot her a withering glare.

"You ever feel like all you do all day is manage some man's emotions so that you can turn around and get his job done for him?" Sharon mused, then startled as she realized she had spoken out loud.

"That's the job, Sharon," Romanov laughed, a throaty chuckle that sounded, mostly, sincerely amused.

"Managing men's emotions?"

"When you're a woman _and_ a spy? Yes. That's the job. Hell, that was Pepper's job and she wasn't even a spy."

Sharon gave Romanov a searching look. Romanov wasn't looking at her though. She was looking at Steve and Stark and she did not look happy.

Neither did Steve. He stood up, finally, and put down a pen in a gesture that spoke volumes.

"Shit," Romanov muttered.

 _Yes!_ Sharon thought.

"I've got Tony," Romanov started to move off, following Stark. She paused at the door and tossed her red hair in Steve's direction. The unspoken instructions were clear: _You go and manage Steve's emotions._

Sharon nodded at Romanov but didn't move. She simply sat, watching everyone else scurry through the glass-walled maze. Everyone was rushing somewhere, doing something, talking, arguing, fighting. The past 24 hours felt like acid-tinged blur and she was exhausted. She was going to take some damned time to think.

Certainly, it didn't look like anyone else was going to.

Steve retreated to a conference room where he and Wilson were having a taciturn conversation. She didn't need to hear him to know it was taciturn. They were speaking in Guy Code and that was always taciturn. Steve caught her looking at him and offered her a smile that lit up his face. She smiled back on reflex. How could you not? He was so damned beautiful. And kind. And generous. Even exhausted, angry, upset from his conversation with Stark, he still managed to give her a smile that felt warm and genuine. He was sincerely happy to see her.

 _Why?_ The voice in her head sounded a like Romanov's. _Why the hell would he be happy to see me?_

She'd flirted with him, very gently, for a few weeks on assignment, three years ago. Then he found out that she was undercover, lying to him. She'd been _lying_ to the most honest man in America.

It didn't bother her – that was her job _._

But it _should_ bother _him_.

On the way back from the funeral that morning, they'd flirted and talked in the cab, nearly _somethinged_ in the hotel. They didn't have much of a connection at all. Well, she _had_ gotten him the lead on Bucky and smuggled him to Buchrest.

 _Did he ever ask why?_ Romanov's voice again.

 _She_ knew why she'd done it – orders from Bob. She was doing her job. But, unless he was a lot more devious than she imagined, he had no inkling of that. She'd risked her life, her career, her reputation, to help him and he just accepted it like it was his… due. As if, of course, she would help him. It never dawned on him to ask _why_.

The answer came when he smiled at her again, that big, beautiful, beaming smile full of warmth and affection and … attraction.

Peg.

She'd shown up in his life literally the day after he lost Peggy Carter – a competent woman who helped him out when he needed it. He had simply slotted her into a Peggy-shaped hole in his life. Hell, her last name was Carter, even. He just assumed she'd be his new Peggy – be on his side, break rules for him, and ….

Kiss him as he headed off for his mission.

Well _shit._

"Ma'am? The psychologist is here."

Sharon turned to see Lulić standing in the door.

"I'm sorry?"

"Doctor Broussard, the psychologist to interview Mr. Barnes? He's down in the lobby waiting to be checked in."

"Thank you, Lulić. Could you inform the lesser… Could you please inform Deputy Ross?"

"Certainly, ma'am," Lulić smirked at her 'mistake.' Sharon smiled to herself as she headed for the elevator. The morale on the task force was rocky, thanks to Ross. She couldn't be seen to actively undermine his authority, but she could let them know that she had their backs and sympathized with them. Lulić was the biggest gossip in the place and the story of her 'slip' would circulate faster than Starks's 2006 sex tape.

It would also reinforce his position as an outsider on the task force. The fall out on this was going to be epic and Sharon didn't imagine she could dodge it all but she hoped Ross would take the brunt.

"Guten tag, Herr Doctor," Sharon shook the hand of the tidy little man in glasses.

"Good evening, Ms. Carter," his English was flawless and only slightly accented.

"Thank you for coming on such short notice."

"I am happy to help in any way possible, of course."

While she did the little dance with IDs and security checks, Sharon watched Broussard out of the corner of her eye. He was a white man, about her height and clean shaven, pleasant looking and maybe even handsome in an understated way. But something about him itched at her.

"Have you worked for the task force before?" she tried some small talk as they made their way to the elevator.

"No, I have not."

 _Okay, no small talk._

Sharon rode the slow elevator down five levels to the sub-basement, watching the psychologist's reflection in the polished metal of the door. He didn't fidget, just stood still and contained. Calm.

Maybe that's what was scratching at the back of her brain. His perfect calm. Civilians had a lot of reactions when faced with an international terrorist who had just blown up the U.N., but "calm" was rarely one of them.

Then again he was the shrink that the task force called in when they needed to evaluate a brain-washed super-soldier from WWII. He probably had some background dealing with dangerous men. She made a mental note to double check his credentials and experience. Also to find out who had vetted him. If it was Ross, she'd try to find another doctor for a second opinion.

What would Barnes think of him? Barnes had gone MIA just a few years after Sigmund Freud himself died, when psychology was still in its infancy. Since then, he'd been tortured in a way designed to make him both wary of authority figures and uncertain of his own reality.

The doc had his work cut out for him.

 _Ding._

"This way, Herr Doctor," she gestured, her heart sinking as she looked up and saw Ross waiting for them.

"Doctor, thank you for coming!" Ross's voice practically boomed in the enclosed space.

"I am happy to help in anyway, of course."

Sharon blinked. The same words he had said to her, in the same inflection.

She looked at the man out of the corner of her eye, her itch growing.

Ross ignored her, of course.

"For security reasons, we'll have the video feed on and five guards in the room— "

"I would prefer to be alone in the room, please," Broussard said.

"Well, of course he'll be restrained," Ross glanced over at Sharon sharply, "but I'd feel more comfortable if you—"

"I would prefer to be alone in the room, please," Broussard's voice was quiet, implacable.

Ross blinked and looked at Sharon for reinforcement. She kept her face smooth as glass.

"He's a killer, Doctor. You could be in danger."

"You will have video, _da?_ Then I would prefer to be alone in the room, please. It will help my process and begin to build trust."

Ross looked at the doctor, frustrated and flummoxed.

Sharon _stared_ at the doctor, her unease growing.

A gut feeling was not actionable. She needed _proof_.

"Sir, why don't we station troops outside the door and give them live access to the video feed? They will be just a few feet further away than if they were in the room and it will give the doctor the privacy that he wants."

"Fine," Ross spat the word before turning on his heel and stomping away.

Sharon gave the doctor a small, tight smile that acknowledged her boss's bad behavior without apologizing for it.

The guards nodded at her in recognition while still insisting on checking her ID and the doctor's ID. That's why they were chosen for this assignment. They were by-the-book. Sharon loved by-the-book types.

They were much easier to work around.

The squad leader was unthrilled with the new set up but since all the guards just heard Ross agree to it, no one argued.

Sharon swiped her ID and the door opened revealing The Winter Soldier.

He was clamped in the Box and Sharon tried hard not to stare. Peg had had words to say about Bucky Barnes and not all of them were kind, though most were at least grudgingly respectful. He sat in the box with the same sort of internal stillness that she'd seen in Buddhist monks. She looked closer at the angle of his head and his hooded eyes. Maybe it was less monk-like and more tiger-like.

His famously square jaw was blurred by a three-day beard and his hair needed a good wash and trim, but she could still see the beautiful boy that Peg spoke about. He looked harder and bulkier than he did in his uniformed file photo and his eyes looked … hunted. But not feral, not like she remembered from the D.C. incident. He was caged but not afraid.

Sharon wasn't quite sure what to think of that and tucked it into her "worry about later" mental file. It was getting crowded in there.

That thought made her pause for a minute. Was she being deliberately rushed? It _felt_ like she was being deliberately rushed. Damnit. Something hinky was going on here.

She looked over at the doctor again. He was standing by the door of the room, his eyes fixed on Barnes. That unease stirred again but again, she clamped down. She needed _proof._

Sharon took a minute on the computers to arrange the video and audio feeds, piping them to the screens just outside the door as well as the conference rooms upstairs. She sent a mental plea up to the universe that Steve hadn't moved and "accidentally" clicked the audio live stream so that it would play in one _particular_ conference room, saved the settings and backed out before anyone could glance over to see what was taking so long.

She needn't have worried. The squad leader – Brühl, she thought his name was – was watching the doctor. Broussard and the other guards were all staring at Barnes. Barnes was gazing off into the middle distance.

No one was looking at her.

 _It's good to be taken for granted_ , she thought, with a small private smile.


	8. Pretty Blonds

_Secured Evidence Room, Task Force HQ, Berlin, German_

" _Guten abend, Frau Carter,"_ Pierre Fischer smiled at her.

" _Guten abend,"_ she put a little extra bounce her step and sparkle into her eyes. Fischer's fondness for pretty blonds was well known - a little flirting now might pay big dividends later. "How are you on this… exciting evening?"

"Is it exciting, yes? The Winter Soldier and Captain America here, in our building!" There was a little extra lilt in his voice when he said Captain America. Was he one of Steve's fanboys? Oh. But this might be useful…. "He was special friends with your aunt, yes? Do you know him?"

"I do," she said, adding a little lilt of her own and a suggestive tilt of her shoulders. "In fact, I'm going upstairs to see him right now."

"Lucky girl!"

"Sadly, I'm only bringing him paperwork," she said, shrugging. "I need the receipt for his and Sam Wilson's equipment."

Fischer snorted, a small puff of derision that made his forelock flutter as he started to fiddle with the computer.

"Yes?" she prompted, leaning forward a little. Her quilted vest didn't show much cleavage but the movement was suggestive enough to add a little sweetener to the conversation.

"Oh, it's silly," he said, waving dismissively in a way that practically begged for further inquiry.

"It's been a long day," she said, coaxing him along. "I could use a little silly right now. Indulge me?"

He looked around, overtly furtive, and then leaned in, grinning. "Steve deserves better than Wilson. I just don't think Sam is right for our boy."

 _He was_ _ **that**_ _kind of fan,_ Sharon thought. Of course, it made sense. He _did_ love pretty blonds.

"I don't think he is, either. But I'm working on it," Sharon winked at him.

His eyes got huge and his face made a silent little O as he snatched the receipt off the printer.

"Thank you, Pierre," she took the paper from him. "I'll let you know how it goes."

"You had better!"

Reflexively, she put a little extra sway in her walk as she headed for the elevator, certain that he would appreciate the effort.

The doors to the elevator slid shut and Sharon let out a small sigh. In the fishbowl of HQ, the elevators were some of the only private spaces and she could almost feel the pressure of constant observation lifting off her skin - like stepping out of hot sun into cool shade. Her reflection was offset by the seam in the doors, as if she'd been sliced in half and the left side had started to slide off. She leaned right to get a better look at herself. She looked tired but so did everyone else on the Task Force. Still, she needed a break and soon. She had contingency plans within contingency plans, layered with decoys and false trails, all of them chasing the others' tails in her head as she weighed variables and risks, possibilities and probabilities. The effort of keeping them all balanced was starting to take a toll. She shouldn't risk adding another ball in the air but...

Pierre's crush on Steve opened a new and tantalizing opportunity - Sam Wilson.

Her mandate was, specifically, Steve. But if one was good, two was better. Steve remained a useful asset without his equipment, of course, thanks to the super-soldier serum. Without the EXO-7, Sam was just another retired vet and she could recruit those by the dozen. But if she could get the suit and recruit him and Steve…

Glancing down at the receipt, she let out a bark of laughter. Pierre _really_ disliked like Wilson, didn't he?

As the echoes of her laugh faded in the tiny elevator, she sobered quickly, slotting her plans into place. Bob would forgive her for calling an on-the-spot amendment to the plan.

Only if she succeeded, of course.

The bell dinged and she squared her shoulders and stepped out back into the hot glare of scrutiny.

Damnit. Stark and Romanov were talking with The Greater Ross in the main room right next to the conference room she'd chosen. That was unfortunate. The Lesser Ross was in C&C yelling at Lulić. She would have to get in there, soon. But first she needed to scratch her little itch about Herr Doktor.

Steve and Wilson were watching him interview Barnes, with the sound turned off, of course.

"Here's the receipt for your equipment."

"Bird costume?" Sam yelped, outraged.

"Hey, I didn't write it," she glanced around. Too many people stood in hearing range for her comfort, but she couldn't think of any way to make them move. And she'd only tweaked the feed for this one conference room.

Steve was watching the monitor with single-minded focus, but when she clicked on the audio, he suddenly came to quivering attention. She could practically feel his muscles tense and his breathing quicken.

She could understand that. Here was a trained professional who might be able to tell him if Bucky was sane. With Peggy's demise, Bucky was his last thread to hold onto.

She worried, again, about his sanity if that thread snapped. _What happened if you broke a good man?_

Outside the conference room, Romanov turned her head slightly and Sharon felt all her muscles tighten. Could she hear the speakers? Had she noticed Sharon walking into the room? Would she think that Sharon had let Steve eavesdrop out of compassion? Did she think Sharon was befuddled by a pretty pair of eyes or some (admittedly impressive) biceps? Or would she divine Sharon's deeper motivation?

She was playing against a living legend, Sharon reminded herself. She was going to make mistakes. Remember to accept them, learn, adapt, move on. She turned her attention back to the interview.

Broussard was talking in that soothing tone that she associated with dog trainers and shrinks from movies. None of the actual mental health experts she'd dealt with over the years spoke like that. But, of course, she wasn't a terrorist suspect. Maybe they only used that tone on vicious German shepherds and brain-washed mass murderers.

Still, the anomaly added to her itch.

"Why did they release his photo?" Steve asked.

Sharon stared at him as the fog of her exhaustion lifted and all the things she'd been worrying about suddenly slotted together. Steve was still talking and she answered him on autopilot as they both came to the same conclusion at the same time.

"They wanted us to bring him here."

Of course, that's the moment that the lights went out.

Not just the lights, either. The constant subliminal white noise of a modern office, that teeth-itching hum that you learned to ignore, simply ceased. The sudden ringing silence was more terrifying than the unexpected dark.

The emergency lights didn't come up.

Well _, that_ went pear-shaped much faster than she'd expected.

Possibilities unfurled in her mind, and she didn't like her chances in any of them. None of her people here geared up for a fight with an enhanced human. Whatever was coming, she needed real muscle.

"Sublevel five, east wing," she said to the prettiest muscle in Berlin. Steve took off, Wilson close on his heels.

Whether this was a break in or a break out, they needed to cover the exits. She followed the men out into the main room.

Romanov turned to her with a look like relief. "How many?"

"Roof, two side doors, main entrance. The main entrance is closest to the interrogation room."

"Tony and I will take the front," she looked over at the bedraggled and exhausted Stark. "Please tell me you brought a suit with you?"

"Yes, a nice silk three piece," he snarked. "I'm an unarmed noncombatant, remember?"

She let Romanov chivvy him down to the lobby and sprinted to her C&C room. The Lesser Ross was yelling at people to try to get the back-up generators running.

"It's an EMP," she snapped. "Nothing that wasn't shielded is going to work." _You idiot_.

"How do you know that?"

Sharon ignored him, snapping out orders to her team. "Comms are down. Lulić, you and Marconi go up to the roof and let them know that we're expecting hostiles, possibly from _inside_. Weber, I need you and Whittenborn to do the same for the side entrances. We put the big guns – Stark and Romanov – on the front, which is their most probably route. Okay folks, we've drilled this, you know what to do. Let's go."

Dropping headsets, her team scattered around the building, leaving nothing but spinning office chairs in their wake and Sharon took a moment to smile, deeply grateful for the members of her team. Ross just gaped at her as she turned heel and sprinted, bypassing the elevators ( _why_ hadn't the damned emergency generators kicked in yet?) and running down the stairs.

She was only halfway down before she heard the screaming start.


	9. In the Line of Fire

_Center of a Shit Storm, Berlin, German_

Romanov and Stark were arguing at the top of the stairwell. Because _of course_ they were.

"You're not—"

"I've got a little back up, give me some credit," Stark snapped. The lines of worry on his face made him look old and tired.

"Tony, you're not trained for this."

 _For the love of –_

"Those are my people down there," Sharon snapped as sounds of a fight ricocheted up the echoing stairwell. "Romanov, you and I will go right, Stark, you take the left stairwell and distract him. I assume whatever back-up you have is ranged?"

"And who are you?" Stark snapped.

Romanov sighed. "She's right, Tony. If you distract him with one of your toys, Sharon and I can both hit him and slow him down until Steve gets here."

Stark started to object.

"Without your suit, we're all just folks, Tony," Romanov interrupted with a delicate snort. "Barnes isn't. We need Steve and I'm not letting your pissing fight with him get me killed. Go, _now_."

Sharon shot her a grateful glance as Stark ran down the left stair and she and Romanov sprinted down the right one.

"There?" Romanov pointed to a spot out of Barnes's field of vision.

"Perfect," Sharon nodded. By silent accord, they waited until Barnes was twisted away from them and slipped up next to the brutalist pillars that Sharon had always hated.

She glanced around the corner of the pillar and winced. The lobby was littered with downed bodies and broken tables and Barnes was bashing on two of the SWAT team grunts – Berger and Jacobs, she thought. She watched as he wrenched Berger's baton away from him and then backhanded the ex-SAS agent clear across the room. Romanov was right. They were all just folks compared to Barnes. Where _the hell_ was Steve?

"We're in position," Romanov said into her wrist.

Stark stepped out from behind a different set of pillars and held up his hand. Sharon had a moment to register that he was wearing a glove-like object before there was a ripple in the air and a quiet _thrum_ - _skree_ and Barnes froze in place. Then another, brighter flare of white light and Sharon silently cheered as Barnes ducked, clearly stunned or hurt. Maybe stark could keep him pinned down?

Then Stark started _closing on the Winter Soldier._

"What the hell is he doing?" Romanov muttered, without surprise or rancor.

Sharon gaped, first at Romanov then at Stark. He was _fifty years old_! He wasn't in his suit so he was a _civilian_!

"We've got to save him," Sharon said, sprinting into the fight.

Behind her, she heard Romanov mutter, "Damnit," and follow.

By the time Sharon had covered those ten yards, Stark was already on the ground, a crumpled heap of expensive suit in the wreckage of a table. _Idiot._

She launched herself from the sprint into a left-side kick and then used the momentum of the backswing to power a right-side kick. The inertia of the blows staggered Barnes back five feet and Romanov flashed by her, taking advantage of the opening. She leapt up to plant her knee right in his gut, followed by a fist to his lower abdomen.

The sheer speed and force of the women's attack caught the super soldier by surprise and he kept falling backwards, his eyes blank and stunned. Sharon took advantage of the larger space to aim a roundhouse kick at his temple. The blow snapped his head hard to one side. Encouraged, she tried it again.

This time, though, Barnes was expecting it. His metal arm clamped around her thigh, vice strong, and he flipped her away from him like flinging away a rag doll. As the room cartwheeled around her, she had a moment of perfect mid-flight clarity – _this is gonna hurt –_ before she hit a table with a teeth-jarring _crunch_. A bright burst of light exploded behind her eyes and she tumbled down a well of uneasy darkness.


	10. Optics

_**{NOTE FOR READERS: So, I don't speak German. Or Polish. Or any language other than American English. My translations are the best I can muster with Google. If you do speak German and have suggestions, first, I deeply apologize for any mistakes and second, please feel free to drop me a note if you have the time and energy to fix my translations.}**_

 _On a stretcher in the back of an ambulance_

" _Frau Carter! Alles OK?"_

Blue flashes strobed through the restless dark. Sharon squeezed her eyes against the unpleasant sensation but the motion sent a spike of pain through her skull.

Someone was speaking, urgently, loudly, near her face.

Her brain stumbled until it could identify the language as German. It took another few iterations to dredge the translation from her hindbrain. The effort pushed her awake.

"I'm… ow, I'm awake, I'm awake," she muttered, squinting against the glare of the ambulance. "Er… uh, _ich bin wach."_

The EMS snorted and leaned back on his heels, looking concerned.

Sharon ignored him, trying to piece herself back together. It wasn't the first time she'd woken up after a … fight… she'd fought the Winter Soldier…. _That was dumb, Sharon. Why the hell did you do that? I had to save Tony Stark-_

"Stark! Romanov!" she sat up abruptly. The motion made the interior of the ambulance wobble around her and she had to grip the sides of the gurney to keep from tipping over. "Are they OK?"

"Calm down, settle down," the EMS put his hands on Sharon's shoulders and pushed gently.

Her mind still scrambling, Sharon's body took over and grabbed the poor man's right thumb, twisting it in and up, forcing him to his knees to prevent the joint from popping right out. The EMS's strangled cry of _"Halt! Bitte! Halt!"_ brought Sharon back to herself and she let go, holding her hands up.

"Sorry, sorry," she said, squeezing her eyes closed as she scrabbled around in her brain for the German words. " _Es tut mir Leid. Sorry."_

The EMS took a wary step back, as far out of Sharon's reach as he could get. Sharon took the respite to gather her thoughts.

"Where's Broussard?" she asked aloud and the EMS didn't answer at all. "I need to find Broussard."

"Not until you've been checked for concussion," Romanov's voice made Sharon snap her head around, sending a swirl of pain up her spinal column.

"Ow, oh, ow, I think Broussard was involved, where is he? Is Stark OK?" _I didn't let Iron Man get killed on my watch, did I?_ "Did we get Barnes? Where's Steve?"

The EMS shot a beseeching look at Romanov.

"Go get a cup of coffee," Romanov offered, tipping her head to indicate he should leave.

The poor kid bolted out of the car.

"You scared him."

" _Where is Broussard?"_

"Ross sent all the guards after Barnes. No one locked down the sublevel."

"Fuck. He's gone, isn't he?"

"Yup. I didn't think to stop him," Romanov twisted her mouth into a wry smile. "Sorry."

"Not your fault," Sharon swung her feet over the side of the stretcher. "You assumed Ross was competent. Barnes?"

"Gone."

"Steve?"

"Gone."

"Wilson?"

"Gone."

"Stark?"

"Here," Romanov bobbled her head. "Broken arm, but here."

"Small blessing, I guess."

"If we'd lost Stark… Thank you for charging in to save him."

"Well, you can bet I won't do that again," Sharon said as she winced and stretched. Her back was sore. Her hip was sore. Her neck was sore. Her head throbbed.

Romanov stared at her for a heartbeat and then turned around to fish through the tidy clutter of the ambulance. She turned back with a bottle of water and three Advil.

Smiling gratefully, Sharon knocked them back. It wasn't until after she swallowed that she remembered she'd just taken three a few hours ago…. She thought.

"How long was I out?"

"About fifteen minutes."

"Shit."

"You need to get checked for concussion."

Sharon nodded, not at all reluctantly. She didn't _feel_ like she had a concussion but she had been up for 36 hours. It had been longer than that since she'd eaten a meal that didn't come wrapped in cheap plastic. Her ability to make good decisions was deeply compromised and only an idiot like Stark ( _or Steve_ , her traitorous brain added) insisted on forging ahead in those circumstances.

She blinked a few times and then asked, "Natasha, have _you_ been checked for concussion?"

The Widow twisted her lips into her famous smile. "Not yet."

"You've got bruises on your neck."

"He choked me."

"Steve's bestie is kind of an asshole."

"He's brainwashed."

"There's always some damned excuse."

"Yes. Yes, there is."

Sharon shot Romanov a sour look and she shrugged. Sharon thought about it and shrugged back. Even before secret serums and gamma-ray explosions, men had always had some damned excuse for being assholes. Super powers or super suits didn't do anything to change that.

A thought popped into Sharon's still rattled brain.

"T'Challa?"

"Pissed that we've lost Barnes, but otherwise OK," Romanov said, offering a wry smile. "He saved my ass."

"I'm glad."

Romanov cocked her head and smiled.

"Should I let the medic back in to check you for concussion?"

"Yes. You going to get checked out?"

"Now, yes."

Romanov turned to go but Sharon called out, "Natasha?"

She twisted to look back over her shoulder. "Yes?"

"Thank you."

Romanov nodded.

The white-faced EMS came back in and Sharon apologized, sincerely, before submitting to the minor indignities of the concussion test. She knew the year and the chancellor and how many fingers. Her pupils contracted, she wasn't nauseated or dizzy. She could recite back a string of five numbers right away and after ten minutes.

After a few minutes the EMS said, "You don't seem to have a concussion but I want to take you to the hospital anyway for a scan. You were out for longer than I'm comfortable with."

The idea of a leisurely ride to the hospital and a quiet rest in an MRI sounded seductively appealing to Sharon. Especially if she got to nap afterwards.

"We have on-site doctors here," she said, instead. "I promise I'll have them check me every hour."

The EMS nodded reluctantly and helped Sharon to her feet.

She emerged from the back of the ambulance into a scene of chaos. Medical personnel were still tending to the injured. Sharon hoped everyone was alive. _Polizeiautos_ and _krankenwagen_ were still arriving, heralded by spinning lights and grating sirens. Some civilians were standing, filming on their phones, and others were sitting, weeping quietly. Black-clad guards clustered in tight knots around the doors, bristling with guns and keyed up on unspent adrenaline.

"Horse, barn," she muttered, limping up to the nearest group.

" _Guten abend_ , Agent Carter. I.D., please?"

"Good evening, Captain Schmidt," she smiled and handed over her I.D. The entire group maintained their deadpan expressions as Schmidt carefully checked her I.D., ostentatiously looking at the photo and her face three times before letting her past. Everyone exchanged carefully polite nods as she limped past and back into the building.

Frustration made her grind her teeth as she thought of the _twelve_ separate memos she'd written about how, in this brave new world of gods and monsters and near-magical tech, visual I.D. checks were simply not reliable. Loki has proven that he could change faces. So had Romanov. Her superiors had agreed every time and yet the damned procedures never changed.

" _Pani_ Cater, I'm glad you're well!" Novak caught sight of her from across the wrecked lobby and picked his way through the broken chairs towards her.

"Thank you. Did you make it out alright?"

" _Tak, dziękuję,"_ he nodded. "I was in the _łazienka_ when everything happened. _Zastępca_ Ross is upstairs, in C &C, trying to take control after the birds. You probably want to get up there before he stuff flies up everyone's nose."

"Thank you, Novak," she said. With her head still pounding like an oompah band, she couldn't remember her scraps of Polish, but she got his meaning from context. He must be rattled, though. She'd never heard him slip into his native language so often.

"I'm to go check on the Iron Man, make sure he is well."

"Romanov said he had a broken arm, so check with the medical personnel. I'll go save everyone from Ross."

He patted her on the shoulder with one heavy hand and she had to restrain a wince.

She made her way slowly towards the elevator bank, staring at the dead lights over the doors for at least ten steps before she realized that the EMP must have taken those down, too. Veering slightly, she headed for the enormous and hideous concrete stairs. Cursing every architect who thought brutalism was a good idea, she walked slowly and carefully up the stairs, keeping her face carefully set against the twangs running through the muscles in her lower back and right hip.

Three floors up and she was sweating with pain by the time she got to the C&C. She could hear Ross shouting before she crested the third story.

He'd gathered the staff in a dark room, lit by a few small windows and emergency lanterns. The computers were still down, of course, but a few of the staff had their tablets, laptops, and smart phones out, the blue glow of the screens underlighting their determined faces. They were trying, because they were the best damned staff in the world.

Strategizing her approach, she let herself limp more as she made her way to the C&C room.

"—but where I'm from, we don't let… what are you all- ?"

Ross turned around, mouth set in a grim line.

"Agent Carter, welcome!" he said, dripping sarcasm. "Where have you been?"

"Getting my ass handed to me by the Winter Soldier…. Sir," she eased herself down into a chair. "What were _you_ doing during the fight?"

She waited until he opened his mouth before interrupting.

"Why are you all up in here in the dark?"

Ross stared at her, blinking, for a long moment before he answered. "I need to coordinate—"

"There's natural light and better cell reception in the lobby. Has anyone checked with facilities as to why the back-up generator didn't kick in? Marconi?"

"Not yet, ma'am," he said.

"Go on and do that. When you find out, report back to us in the lobby, please. Thank you. Dubois, can you call your friend at dispatch and find out if anyone in the city has power? If facilities can't get us back up and running, we're going to need a temporary HQ."

"What about the incident trucks, ma'am?" Zaiatz suggested from her corner. "They are specifically shielded against EMPs."

"That's an excellent idea. Please go check on those and report back to us. Again, we'll be in the lobby. Dubois, you should still contact your friend and find out what the city looks like. We don't know if this was just a prison break or a larger attack and we're going to need to coordinate with the _polizia._ Speaking of police, Lulić, can you go talk to the incident commander and make sure we get copies of the video from those civilian idiots out there with their smart phones? Thank you. Alright, the rest of you, grab whatever works and let's relocate to the lobby. When we reassemble there, you're going to tell me what I forgot. Deputy Ross, I need to speak with you."

Sharon suspected that it was her last sentence, more than anything else, which helped them all clear out in record time.

Ross had the good sense to wait until everyone was down the stairs before he rounded on her.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" he said, leaning down into her face and using a low voice that was probably intended to be menacing.

"Ross, sit down," she sighed. "I just got tossed around like a rag doll by Bucky "the Winter Soldier" Barnes. You don't scare me, at all."

Ross blinked and straightened back up.

"Seriously, sit down. My neck hurts and the Advil hasn't kicked in yet."

He stood there and then slowly crossed his arms.

"Okay, fine," she scooted her chair back so she didn't need to tilt her head back up at him. "How did you get this job?"

"What?"

"Never mind," she scratched her forehead. "Ross, where's Broussard?"

"Who?"

"The 'doctor' that was examining Barnes. Where is he?"

"Probably in with the medical personnel," he said, bewildered.

"Ross, he's gone. He was clearly involved in the Barnes break out."

" _What?"_

"It's obvious. I see it. Romanov sees it. Stark sees it. And it's your fault."

"How is it my fault?"

"You were in charge of the team that vetted him. You personally authorized his request to be alone with Barnes, and you didn't detain him afterwards. You've got a PR nightmare on your hands, Ross."

"I didn't … but I just … I didn't have anything to do with vetting him," he spluttered.

"I know, I know," Sharon soothed. "But it's going to look bad."

His face got flushed then pale as he thought through all the implications.

"Did anyone die during his escape?" she asked.

"No, at least… not that I know of."

"Good. That's a small blessing," she leaned forward, suppressing a wince. Now was not the time to look weak. "Now, you've got a bunch of problems. We're going to have find Broussard but we don't want to make a big splash about it. You're the public face of the team, so you're going to have to be seen running the clean up. That's why I moved the team to the lobby, so you could be more visible. I can organize the search for Broussard, or whatever his name is, without anyone noticing. If we can get him in custody, quickly, we can paper this over."

"Why are you so interested in protecting me?" he squinted at her.

"I'm not," she leaned back. "I'm interested in protecting my team. This is just how I do it."

 _Was he buying this bullshit?_ Sharon wondered.

There was a long pause as he chewed it over. She could almost hear the smoke coming from his brain and fought the urge to hurry him along.

"I didn't design The Box," he said, slowly.

"Yes," Sharon managed to suppress a fist pump. He bit. "Stark did. No one is really thrilled with Stark right now."

"It's not my fault that he broke out of it."

"Not at all."

"I'm working hard to rectify themes left to me by these _enhanced_ humans."

"And playboy billionaires."

"And Russian spies," Ross practically hissed the last word. Clearly he'd had some run in with Romanov while she was out. That could be useful later.

"So you are going to go downstairs and publicly clean up this mess that you inherited. And I will work quietly to see if we can catch Broussard and maybe even recover Barnes."

"Okay, yes," he nodded, eager to leave the real work to her.

"I'm gong to need some slightly higher authorizations if we want to keep this sub-rosa, though. Can you bump my clearance up a notch?"

"Yes, of course."

Sharon grabbed a tablet off the table and keyed in the necessary things, moving quickly while Ross ruminated, half out loud, about what he could do to make the clean-up more public.

"I need your thumb print here," she handed him the tablet, "and a retinal scan here…."

He nodded and accepted the tablet and Sharon barely managed not to smile.


	11. Checkpoint

_Starbucks, Friedrichstraße 210, Berlin, German_

"Tall iced decaf non-fat caramel macchiato, please," Sharon ordered.

"Name?" the barista didn't look up.

"Sharon."

"Sharon! You're here late!" The barista, a pink-haired and oft-tattooed woman named Erna, looked up and smiled the bright beaming smile of someone lucky enough to have slept in the past 24 hours.

"Busy day at work."

"You do look a little tired."

"Thanks a lot!" Sharon mustered a grin to take the sting out of her sarcasm.

"I'm sorry," Erna laughed, taking Sharon's Starbucks card and swiping it. "You have a good night!"

"You, too."

She wandered down to the counter to wait for her drink and browsed idly through the kitschy mugs with BERLIN written in big letters on the side. Located near Checkpoint Charlie, this particular Starbucks attracted a lot of American tourists. It was also conveniently located about halfway between the task for HQ and her little flat in Kreuzberg. She dropped in every morning and most nights.

That was important. She was so tired she was seeing trails and her field craft was suck right now. Sticking to routines was important.

Her drink came and she sucked it down with unseemly haste while she walked through the nearly deserted streets. The sugar hit would get her the last half kilometer to her place and then not keep her awake.

It had taken three hours to get everything as settled as she could – the power was back up, her team had instructions, and Ross was too busy covering his ass for the cameras to interfere. When she'd stumbled over the same chair for the fourth time, Zaiatz had pulled her to one side and given her a stern lecture and sent her home. She was grateful – only two of the stumbles had been intentional.

Probably no one was following her. All eyes were looking for Barnes. Or Steve and Wilson. But if someone did follow her, they'd see her go into her usual Starbucks, buy her usual drink, and walk home her usual way. Sticking to routines was important.

Had she already said that?

Her plodding footfalls sounded loud on the stairs and she dropped her keys with a loud clatter before getting into her door. She did a quick spin through, checking in corners and behind doors to make sure she was alone, before she shut and deadbolted the door. She shed her clothes behind her – vest, shirt, bra, shoes, jeans, panties – in a line leading straight to the shower. She rested her gun on the sink and stepped into the shower, letting the hot water pound her neck and shoulders.

Thinking felt like swimming through peanut butter. She missed peanut butter. Germans thought it was weird and the local grocers didn't carry it. Next time she was in the U.S., she should pick some up. Could she order it online? Probably. She'd order a case tomorrow once she was done …

 _You're babbling, Sharon_ , she thought. _Time to go to bed._ Shaking her head sharply, Sharon turned off the water and climbed out. She barely toweled off, but remembered to plug in her phone to recharge and set the alarm for 5:45 am, local time.

She also remembered to fish around in the pocket of her pants and pull out the tiny slip of paper she'd found under the fourth mug from the right at the display at Starbucks. Good field craft dictated that she memorize the information and destroy the paper right now. But she could barely focus her eyes to read Wilson's cramped letters. Instead, she slipped the paper under her phone and fell, still damp and naked, into her bed.


	12. Swearing in Russian

_**Author's Note: Now that summer vacation is over, I'll be able to update again!**_

 _Third-floor flat in Kreuzberg, Berlin, German_

Sharon woke up sitting up in bed, her gun in one hand and her phone in the other. She was naked, stiff, and her heart was pounding as she looked around wildly. She blinked away fragments of her dreams– Steve Rogers falling, cats in Iron Man suits, Nick Fury still alive – until she finally settled into her own body.

She was in her own bedroom, in her own bed, with the morning light coming in the windows. Her phone was beeping.

" _Scheiss drauf_ ," she muttered to herself as she thumbed off the alarm and looked at the time. 5:45. German swears didn't feel sufficient so she switched to Russian. _"Yob tvoyu mat,"_ she muttered. Today was going to be fun.

During her long hot shower, she sorted out her plans and contingencies and back-ups. She also had a long hard think about Steve.

He was making certain assumptions about _their_ relationship which were based entirely on his relationship with Peggy. It wasn't being done with malice, of course. Steve would never hurt her deliberately. But she needed to think about what she was going to do if he continued to treat her like… like… a replacement goldfish.

She snorted and cranked the water off. Romanov was right – she was a woman and a spy. She knew what she was going to do. Which meant she needed to blow her hair dry and straight instead of pulling it back into a braid while it was still damp. Her outfit had to walk a line between, too. She chose skinny jeans and a well-fitted Barbour jacket with knee-high boots.

The boots made her hesitate. They were cute but … would Steve Rogers notice? And was it worth the compromise in her ability to fight if things went south? _When_ things went south. This whole thing was a JANFU from start to finish and she had to assume that nothing would go as planned.

No. She switched back into the boots she'd worn yesterday.

Her reflection in the mirror was pretty and polished, maybe a little too casual for a normal workday but not noteworthy. She nodded at herself once, in approval, and then looked around the flat. If everything went right, she could come home tonight. Nothing was going right this week, so she gave it even odds.

It was a cute little flat and she'd miss it if it came to that, but nothing here was irreplaceable. Even the framed photos of her parents and Aunt Peg were copies of prints she had in her DC condo.

In the kitchen, she lay on her side in front of the free-standing kitchen cabinet that had come with the place. The kickboard was, despite her best efforts, a slightly brighter shade of polished birch than the rest of the piece. She gave a tug in just the right place and the whole board swung open, revealing a tidy little hidey hole. Reaching her arm inside, she felt around until… there. The large envelope came away with a tearing sound – the tape was getting old. Another grope and she found the second smaller envelope, tucked further back. The first went into the large zippered compartment inside her purse. The second, she slipped into one of the many handy pockets that Barbour put in all of their jackets.

Not only that, but all of their jackets also fit neatly over her holster. Barbour – the fashionable choice of lady spies!

Her phone went into her pocket, not her purse.

Finally, she grabbed a banana and a bowl of yogurt with granola and sat down to read the tiny slip of paper she'd picked up at the Starbucks last night. It was a string of numbers – the significant digits of some GPS coordinates and "10:30." She pulled out her phone and flipped it open to an incognito browser to type in the coordinates. It was fiddly work to do on her phone, especially with the extra CIA encryption programs, but she'd keep her phone with her while she might have to abandon her laptop to whatever investigators came after.

The coordinates pointed to an overpass in one of the Soviet-era sections of East Berlin. It was near one of the possible meeting points/safe houses that she'd laid out when they were flying from London to Berlin. This one was a _panzerkaserne_ in Bernau – a 20-years abandoned barracks for the Red Army and before that, the 90th _panzerdivison_. She'd also laid out the dead drop at the Checkpoint Charlie Starbucks and given them the location of three of her oh-shit stashes scattered around the city. Assuming they remembered the stashes, they would have a gun and ammo, food and water, cash in Euros, a burner phone, several flavors of rail passes, and a bag full of size 6 women's clothing.

Assuming, of course, that they'd managed not to get caught during the night.

She finished up her hasty breakfast, grabbed a few protein bars, and started checking messages and emails as she headed out. Her inbox was full and her phone was blinking with various notifications, but a quick scan indicated that, indeed, her boys were still at large.

She wasn't sure if she should be impressed with the guys or annoyed at the Task Force. How hard could it be to find two young and beautiful men in skin-tight t-shirts and ball caps – their teeth and their clothes alone would _scream_ "These two are Americans!" She'd chosen the dead drop based on the idea that they might be a _little_ less conspicuous amongst the welter of ex-military Americans that frequented Checkpoint Charlie, but frankly most vets would recognize Steve Rogers on sight. They really should recognize Sam Wilson, too, but …

Well, if she could take advantage of sexist attitudes, she supposed Wilson could take advantage of racist ones.

She finally finished checking through all her emails while she was standing in line at Starbucks. Routines are important. She also checked the dead drop again, but there was no new note from the fugitives, thankfully. They had enough sense to keep their heads down, at least.

Pausing just outside of the video surveillance perimeter, Sharon checked the time. 6:24. Pierre was a very strictly organized man – it's how he got the gig in charge of inventory. And he came in, every day, at 6:30. She fluffed her hair and touched up to her lipstick and pretended to noodle on her phone while privately praying that yesterday's disruptions hadn't been enough to make him sleep in just this one time.

"Sharon!" Pierre's voice caroled out, loud and clear in the quiet streets. "Sharon!"

"Pierre! _Guten Morgen_!" she turned with a big smile. _I love it when a plan comes together._

"How are you this morning? You look refreshed!"

"Is that your way of saying I looked terrible last night?"

He laughed but didn't deny it.

They strode towards the building side by side and Sharon didn't say a thing. Silence has always been a spy's best weapon.

He lasted three whole steps.

"So… Captain America is on the run?"

"So it seems," she added a tiny lilt into her voice.

Pierre glanced at her and she smiled back, a smug and secret smile. She'd practiced it in the mirror this morning.

"He didn't sign the Accords, did he?" Pierre murmured.

"No, he didn't."

"All he did was help a friend," he managed to add all sorts of implications to the word _friend_.

"He and Bucky _are_ very close," Sharon said, nodding and trying to put implications into her own voice.

He gave her a look and she could see his pupils dilate in the early morning sunlight.

They'd reached the clusters of guards, incongruous in their black fatigues against the pretty plaza with its potted trees. After the debacle yesterday, all the tables and chairs were gone, stacked neatly in a corner and roped off. She and Pierre performed the ID ritual and were waved past.

"What are you up to today?" Pierre asked.

"I imagine I'll be cleaning up Ross's mess. All of this is going to splash back on him, eventually. My job is to make sure it doesn't land on anyone else, right?" she nudged him with her elbow.

"That will be tricky. He doesn't seem like the sort of man to fall on his sword, no?"

"He'll try to dodge, but I've got his number," she smiled a sincere and angry smile.

"Yes?"

"Yes. It's all going to fall straight down on his head and no one else's," she carefully didn't put too much emphasis on the last phrase. He had to make the leap by himself.

"All of it? That is an impressive feat."

"He walked onto the Task Force yesterday and spent the day screwing up and pissing people off," she shrugged. "He's rude, incompetent, and I'm pretty sure that they sent him over here as a sacrificial lamb in the first place. It shouldn't be too hard to make sure the whole thing lands in his lap."

A few more steps. They were getting very close to the HQ. _C'mon, Pierre. Bite._

"Well, if there's anything I can do to help," he drawled, finally.

 _Yes!_

"Now that you mention it," she laid her fingers gently on his forearm, coaxing him to a stop so that they could have this conversation in full view of the security cams but out of earshot of the second line of perimeter guards. "I have an errand I have to run for a friend this morning and I could use some help."

"A friend?"

"An old family friend."

"What sort of errand?"

"He left something behind last time he was visiting."

Sharon watched Pierre carefully and could see the moment that he realized the magnitude of what she was proposing. He was a well-trained agent but she could still see the hitch in his breathing and a slight parting of his lips.

He blinked, slowly, and her heart sank as his lips flattened into a narrow line. He was going to refuse.

"Will _his_ friend be there?"

"I assume so." _Did he mean Wilson or Barnes? Did it matter?_

"Will B… he have more than one friend?"

"He certainly will once I see him," Sharon smiled, cocking her head in a slightly suggestive manner. "But yes, I expect he'll have a couple of buddies with him."

There was another long pause and Pierre's eyes went distant. Sharon couldn't tell if he was fantasizing about a threesome between her, Steve, and Barnes, or if he was dealing with the logistics of what she was asking. Or both.

"What would help a lot is if you just spilled your coffee on your lap and had to pop into the bathroom to clean up at, say… 7:37."

"There's a lot of security in place, even if I'm not there."

"Yes."

"If anything goes missing, it's going to make a big mess."

"Yes," she smiled. "And it's all going to land on one person."

Pierre's eyes lit up.

"All on one person?"

"The whole mess, right in one lap."

"Sharon, you are a little minx, has anyone ever told you that?"

"In fact, yes," she nudged him with her shoulder, a flirtatious bump that started him walking again. "Just yesterday, an old family friend said much the same thing to me."

Pierre let out a small involuntary sound, a nearly silent pant of desire, and Sharon smiled. Her morning was going just as planned.


	13. Replacement Goldfish

**Author's note: I didn't mean to let this lie fallow for two years. It's just that the next chapter kept tripping me up. Finally, I've decided to skip it and move on. I'll come back, some day, and write the heist scene where she steals the equipment, but I wanted to move on. I hope you enjoy it.**

 _In a car in the countryside to the East of Berlin_

"That did not go as planned," Sharon muttered to herself, again, as she mentally reviewed the ambiguous situation she'd left behind. She thought she'd gotten away clean, but Romanov's little surprise appearance still made her doubt. Had the spy gotten close enough to plant a tracker on the equipment? Sharon had checked it over thoroughly — the shield was easy enough, but she didn't know anything at all about the suit.

If Romanov had talked to Stark, he might have given her some sort of app on her phone that could have remotely hacked into the suit's OS and turned the whole damned thing into a tracker. Sharon just didn't know enough to know. Usually she'd tap the CIA's wonks for tech back up, but this was a wildcat operation.

Life in the big leagues was not easy.

Her car was one she'd kept stashed in a safe house, recent-but-not-new standard model with  
spotless papers that were utterly untraceable to her. She drove with Germanic precision — scrupulously obeying all laws, two hands on the wheel, and her back straight, despite her overwhelming desire to gently bang her head on the steering wheel when she thought of everything that had gone wrong back at the inventory room. She'd had a plan and Pierre was faultless but had Natasha—

Her mind was skittering in circles — not good. At a stoplight she paused and took a deep breath, clearing her thoughts. It was the end of her fourth circuit and she'd confirmed, again that she didn't have a physical tail. She didn't know if Natasha had planted a tracker, but she needed to decide one way or the other — see the boys or abort?

With a sigh, she mentally shifted her calculations and then put the issue out of her head as she turned towards the meet spot. She needed to focus on this conversation with Steve.

This was a pivotal interaction that would set the tone for their whole relationship afterwards. If she was right and he was slotting her into Peggy's role in his head, he'd expect a dramatic kiss. If she was actually her own person to him, he _still_ might expect a dramatic kiss — he was a romantic raised on pulp serials and 1930s war movies and the hero _always_ got a kiss before he left.

Nonetheless, if he kissed her, that moved the assignment firmly into honeypot territory, which meant she needed know to know what sort of footing she was on. That meant she'd need to prompt him somehow.

Ideally, all of this was moot and he'd accept her assistance as a gift from equal and not relegate her to the girlfriend-slash-sidekick role.

Sharon snorted out loud.

"A woman and a spy," she repeated Romanov's earlier comment, and was proud that her voice was only a little bitter.

The meeting place was under a Soviet-era overpass to the east of the city, forest of pillars that would be scrawled with graffiti in any other country. They were already there … three ridiculously attractive American men in too-small t-shirts and baseball caps, all crammed into a vintage VW Bug.

"I'm not sure you understand the concept of a getaway car," she couldn't help but snark as she got out of the car.

"It's low profile," he said, he voice completely undefensive.

"Good, 'cause this stuff tends to draw draw a crowd," Sharon popped the trunk and the star from the shield gleamed, even in the shadows of the overpass.

"I owe you again."

"I'm keeping a list." Was he finally taking a second to wonder why she helped him? She glanced over at the Bug, where Barnes was scowled in the back seat as he inched away from Sam.

"You know, he kinda tried to kill me." Would he make excuses?

"Sorry, I'll put him on the list."

She let out a gentle snort; at least he didn't try to placate her. She looked down and licked her lips, suddenly nervous.

"They're gonna come looking for you."

Only if Natasha had put a tracker on her. But maybe a little debt-guilt would help her get a leash on him. "I know."

"Thank you, Sharon," he said, his face open and kind and sincere.

She nodded and waited. He looked at her with those sad, sweet blue eyes and there was a sudden shift in his demeanor. She knew what was coming: The Kiss.

His hand slipped up behind her waist, wide and warm even through her shirt. He stepped in, but not too close, his hips held slightly back from her, ever the gentleman. She closed the distance between then, sliding her hand around the back of his his neck, feeling the soft skin at his hairline.

He kissed very well as he did everything very well. Pressed against the long strength of his body, feeling the muscles of his back under the thin cotton of his t-shirt, she thought that she wouldn't mind so much being in the honeypot position. He was gloriously beautiful, kind and considerate, thoughtful and smart. As long as he saw her as herself.

It was a cinematically informed kiss, just long enough to not trigger the Hays Code. He pulled back and gave her a slightly rueful, almost apologetic smile that broke her heart a little. He looked so damned _young._

Nonetheless, she needed to know. So, as they stood close enough to still breathe each other's air, she said, leadingly, "That was…."

"Late."

Her heart sank even as she smiled and breathed, "Damn right." She stayed close, her hand spread over his broad chest. But, with his damnably good intuition, he seemed to sense he'd said the wrong thing and stepped back.

With a last lingering caress over his bicep, she let him disengage and said "I should go," and walked away.

She wanted to glance at the boys in the Bug but Barnes, at least, might recognize that as recon. Also, it would screw up her exit. Instead, she stuck to her movie-assigned role and walked away from the hero without a look back. Letting him go to fight the good fight.

As she climbed into the car, she hoped he wasn't so spun by the kiss that he forgot to take the damned equipment out of the trunk. It would screw up the big kiss scene if she had to get out of the car and run after him.

She did watch Wilson and Barnes in the side mirror. They both grinned at Steve, like 12 year olds and Sharon let her jaw clench because no one could see her.

The kiss had, in fact, not spun him at all. As she climbed into the driver's seat, Steve hoisted the equipment out and shut the trunk all in one smooth motion. How he did it, she couldn't imagine — it had taken her five trips.

As she drove away, she took on last glance out the window. He was loading the suit into the Bug's front trunk, the shield across his back already. She could hear Wilson and Barnes bickering and Steve's resigned voice moderating. None of them so much as glanced at her — they'd dismissed her from their mind. She'd delivered the goods, given Steve the script-required kiss and they'd moved back to the important plotline.


	14. Rejection breaks so many men

_Coffeebar FU II, Freie Universität, Berlin_

The steam from her coffee spiraled up in a narrow, translucent curl, thinning and disappearing just a few inches above the rim of her mug.

The gentle motion was soothing and Sharon sat, watching it, for … a while. She wasn't sure exactly how long, but when she finally shook herself out of it, the barista was giving her worried glances. Sharon flashed a reassuring smile and the girl smiled back, but it was an uncertain expression. Damnit. She'd come here so she wouldn't be noticed, just another grad student enjoying a midday cup of coffee.

The major objective of her mission was completed. Steve Rogers, aka Captain America, was in the field without having signed the Accords. He had his shield, which was of great symbolic importance, if nothing else, and he had back up: Sam and his suit and, she winced slightly, Bucky Barnes. He was a fugitive and he was beholden to the CIA thanks to the efforts of one Sharon Carter.

One very tired, fried, Sharon Carter. She was exhausted, physically and emotionally, and she was about to enter the most dangerous phase of this mission — the aftermath. More missions were blown during this period of adrenaline let-down than any other time. She needed a few minutes to collect herself.

So she parked her car in a student long-term parking lot, wiped it of prints and found a nice, anonymous coffee house at the university on the other side of the city from both her apartment and the HQ. And sat watching the steam rise for far too long.

The logistics of the next few hours were easy enough to sort out — she was a good little spy and had planned ahead. She had to act as if she hadn't been blown. If she had been blown, there would be a specific window shade lowered in a specific window in a grey, concrete block apartment building at the corner of the Botanical Gardens on Unter den Eichen. She had safe houses, bolt holes and routes out of the city. She would be fine.

Frankly, being blown might be easier. Then she'd be on the run with Steve, which sucked but….

She curled her fingers around her cup.

"C'mon Sharon, let's have that talk," she muttered, and then glanced up at the barista, who was still darting worried glances her way occasionally. Talking to herself wasn't going to help her be unmemorable.

With a little bit of sleight of hand, Sharon reached up under the curtain of her blonde hair and pretended to take out her Bluetooth earpiece, making sure she dropped it onto the hard plastic tabletop. The loud clatter drew the girl's attention. Sharon could almost see the barista's relief as her behavior suddenly made sense: Oh, the nice blonde lady was listening to someone on her mobile's earpiece. That's why she sat still so long, why she muttered to herself. With the puzzle solved, she was dismissed from memory.

The coffee was only lukewarm when she sipped it, but well sugared. Ideally, she'd have a notebook made of flashpaper where she could write out this conversation with herself and then burn it after. But even she hadn't planned ahead for this.

 _Say it, Sharon. Say it out loud, even if it's just in your own head._

The goddamned kiss.

It was a good kiss. And he was so damned attractive. She could still feel the swell of his pecs under his t-shirt as he stepped away from her. He was kind and sweet and loyal to a _stupidly_ epic degree, as evinced by the presence of Bucky in that damned VW Bug. If he was going to be on the run with Barnes and Wilson, acting like… some Secret Avenger group, she could be useful.

And she was almost certain she could parlay that kiss into sex. And once he slept with her, he'd stay loyal until the day she died. He was old-fashioned like that. Sure, she'd be relegated to the girlfriend role on the team, like some damned Pink Lion Princess Allura, her contributions as a tactician, master spy and CIA contact dismissed as sort of an afterthought. Steve wouldn't do that on purpose but… he'd do it. The other two would, too. It would suck but that was the job. She could deal with that.

But in her head, she kept hearing him say, "Late."

He didn't mean three years late. That made exactly zero sense, since he'd been flirting with a cover identity. And they literally hadn't laid eyes on one another during the intervening years.

Nope, he meant 73 years late. He meant Peggy.

Could she go to bed with Steve knowing that he was thinking of Peggy? Short-term… maybe. It was frankly unpleasant but she was a spy and spies did the unpleasant things in the shadows so that heroes could shine in the light. Also, in the privacy of her own head, she could admit that he was so beautiful that she could probably overlook any emotional ickiness.

But if they went on the run, there was a good chance it would be for a long while. Could she wake up next to him every morning, knowing that when he woke up, he'd be disappointed to see her blonde hair instead of Peggy's dark curls?

Flip the question the other way? Could she afford _not_ to? He seemed more stable, more sure of himself now that Bucky was back in his life, but that vibrating sense of skin hunger and loneliness was still there. If, under stress, he made himself vulnerable and she rejected him, he would honor that rejection, of course. He is Steve Rogers.

But… he was even more emotionally fragile than most men. Would that wound him? Rejection broke so many men into pieces.

"He is Steve Rogers," a voice echoed in her mind, so real she almost looked around for the source. Aunt Peggy's voice, dry and certain.

Of course rejection wouldn't break him. He was a good man and he'd lived his whole life, pre-serum, being repeatedly rejected. She smiled at her own foolishness and her shoulder relaxed as she realized that she could say no, safely, to him.

That was such a rare blessing in the world.

"You look awfully happy, Sharon," said a throaty voice. "Whatcha been up to?"

" _Dermo_ ," Sharon breathed, all her relief draining out of her like water as she stared across the table at the Black Widow.


End file.
